Study: proliferation of web video a blessing to networks

A study from the University of Pennsylvania shows that while watching video …

One of the fears television networks have about online video is that the time surfers spend in front of their PCs watching videos on the web takes away from the time they spend vegetating in front of the boob tube. A study by a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania attempts to quantify the effect of web video and discovered that, while online video watching does indeed take away from TV watching, those watching video online spend more time on network-controlled web sites.

For his study "Lost on the Web: Does Web Distribution Stimulate or Depress Television Viewing?" (PDF), Joel Waldfogel surveyed 287 students, staff, and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania last May. The survey asked them how much video they watched both online and on TV. Online viewing was broken down into two categories: video watched via "unauthorized" web sites such as YouTube, tv-links.co.uk, peekvid.com, and BitTorrent sites; and footage seen at "authorized" sites like ABC.com. Respondents were also asked to detail what the shows they watched, where they watched them, and how often they watched them.

While Waldfogel found that conventional TV viewing fell by about five percent for those who spent significant time watching video online, overall viewing almost doubled. That translates into about 15 minutes less spent in front of the TV, but an increase of over four hours spent watching programming online. Of the online viewing time, about 1:45 of it was done on network-controlled sites. The net result for the TV networks is significant: an over 90-minute increase in the amount of time spent watching network-controlled video.

Waldfogel also noticed massive increases in traffic over the two TV seasons (2005-06 and 2006-07) covered in the survey. NBC and Fox both saw an over threefold increase in the programming viewed on their sites. ABC saw a 221 percent bump, while others didn't see as significant of a change. Viewership on unauthorized sites also showed significant increases, but not as much; some of that may be attributed to the networks' crackdown on YouTube and other user-generated video sites.

Data source: University of Pennsylvania

Curiously, the only TV show to show up in the top three most-popular list across TV, authorized web sites, and unauthorized web sites was The Daily Show—once a darling of YouTube, but now available only via a Viacom web site. Grey's Anatomy was popular on both TV and authorized sites (in this case, ABC.com), while South Park and Scrubs were the other two most popular shows for unauthorized viewing.

Waldfogel is careful to note that his data sample is not representative of the US population and suggests further studies using a larger sample. But if the trends seen in the study hold true for the larger population, the networks appear to have little to fear from online video. Their strategy of exercising as much control as possible over their content and keeping it confined to their own sites (e.g., Hulu) appears to be borne out by the data in the study. If users are watching Grey's Anatomy and Lost online instead of on their local TV station, it's better for ABC that viewers watch it on ABC.com instead of on some other site.

Eric Bangeman
Eric has been using personal computers since 1980 and writing about them at Ars Technica since 2003, where he currently serves as Managing Editor. Twitter@ericbangeman